Pakistan’s military accuses neighboring India of sponsoring militants in the restive southwestern Balochistan province, which saw an unprecedented attack this week by armed separatists.

Mehboob Hussain was riding the train home on Tuesday when the tracks under the front car exploded. In the depths of central Pakistan's Bolan Pass, a pocket of wilderness so remote that there is no internet or mobile network coverage, the nine-coach Jaffar Express ground to a halt. Then the bullets started flying.

Baloch separatist militants blew up a railway track and launched rockets at the Jaffar Express, which was carrying over 400 passengers.

Pakistani officials say insurgents who attacked a passenger train carrying 440 people in the southwest killed 21 hostages but security forces rescued the others.

Pakistan freed 190 hijacked train passengers held hostage Wednesday as the battle to free remaining hostages held by the militant group Baloch Liberation Army continued.

Pakistan's army says it has freed more than 300 hostages from a passenger train seized by militants in Balochistan province on Tuesday. The military spokesperson said 33 militants were killed during the operation.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s neglected southwestern province of Balochistan has been the scene of a yearslong insurgency, with a dramatic uptick in attacks in recent years underscoring the struggles the government in Islamabad faces in dealing with myriad security threats.

Pakistan's military spokesman said on Friday the death toll in a train hijacking in the country's southwestern mountains had risen to 31 and he repeated accusations that neighbouring India and Afghanistan backed the militants who carried it out.

India strongly rejected the unfounded allegations made by Pakistan in the wake of the BLA group's attack on the Jaffar Express train. The Indian government told Pakistan that the world knows where the true "epicentre of global terrorism" lies,